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Nocturne: NaPoWriMo 2021, April 17

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Nocturne

With half a life lived in the dark,
an owl’s hoot, an answering bark,
the moon across the water scattered,
ragged clouds, wispy and battered,

I float in night and solitude,
the night determining my mood.
I lie in darkness and I brood,
a momentary interlude.

When sunlight comes in fits and starts,
The day brings out my other parts.
They rise in me from dawn to noon,
dispelling powers of the moon.

Thus balanced between dark and light,
each half consumes its daily bite.
I welcome each within its time—
life varied, balanced and sublime.

For Day 17 of NaPoWriMo, we are to write a poem about the moon.

The Blooming Desert

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The Blooming Desert

Jeeze, Louise!!!!!
Is that your sneeze
that filled this little desert room,
louder than a sonic boom,
and not, in fact, the house collapsing?
Just your allergies relapsing?

More than just a sniff or sneeze—
Not the slightest little breeze,
but one that brings one to one’s knees,
and makes polar icecaps unfreeze!
Although we love the blooming clover,
would that its flowering was soon over.

The palo verde and barrel cactus
have tended to over-impact us.
Morning glory and prickly pear
have proven more than we can bear.
As beauteous as they are, I fear,
what pleases eye just tortures ear!!!

 

Click on flowers to enlarge.

For NaPoWriMo (Not to prompt, I’m afraid.) I woke up with the first four lines of this poem in my head and they pulled me in after them to write this little impromptu poem. Also, for Cee’s FOTD.

Cistena Plum Blossom: Flower of the Day, Apr 16, 2021

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For Cee’s FOTD

Pludged Doze

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Pludged Doze

When she’d clipped and arranged and with water anointed
the roses I’d brought her, she  looked disappointed.
“These roses aren’t flagrant,” my lady-love said,
but she suffered a horrible cold in her head, 
and recently testy, lately each word
she uttered was also slightly absurd.

She was given to certain extreme mis-pronouncements
Like “Dode wad adudder” and other announcements
when I offered a hot and whisky-laced toddy
to coat her sore throat and to comfort her body.
The simplest of pleasures may be greeted with dread
by a bellicose lady with a cold in her head.

And her talent with words, be it poetry or prose,
doesn’t work orally with a plugged nose!

Prompts for the day are comfort, flagrant, talent, bellicose and simple.

NaPoWriMo 2021, Apr 15, Family Habits

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Mexico, 2002.Annie, my second kitten adopted in Mexico, in her favorite place. She was adopted a year or so after after Talulah, whom I had found in a basket of scarves in a shop in Tonala that she had streaked into a minute before I walked in. The owner, whose daughter was allergic, begged me to adopted her and guess what?
After finding homes for five puppies found on the beach after the death of their mother, I found Frida trotting toward us on the busy highway. At first I thought she was a big rat. Cars were speeding by. Of course, she came home with me.
First there was Frida, then Diego.
Sadly, Frida left us, leaving Morrie and Frida to tussle it out over who was top dog.
And last but not least, Kukla and Fran and Ollie and Roo came to join the family. Sadly, only Kukla and Ollie remain, along with Diego and Morrie. Who is next?

(Please click on the photos to enlarge them and see the full captions.)

Family Habits

A magpie, a mole, a raccoon and a rabbit.
I fear that my dad was a creature of habit.
He could not resist any sort of a baby.
A baby rattlesnake? Well, yes. That. Maybe.

Abandoned kittens and a liitle waif thing
held up at a cattle sale from center ring.
Who knows what he bid for the spotted small terrier
he pulled from a rubber boot used as its carrier?

Mother objected, as she always did,
then proceeded to make the puppy her kid.
Dressed it in doll clothes and cuddled and babied it.
Drove an hour  to a vet who distempered and rabied it.

Dad would enter the house looking sheepish with guilt
with some baby animal wrapped in a quilt
or a box or an overshoe to obscure sins
of procurement of fur or feathers or fins.

Mother would object, “You didn’t, Ben, No!”
Then she’d wipe her hands of batter or dough
and reach out for the creature my dad had discovered,
and after first protests, she quickly recovered.

Always an animal somewhere in the house.
A parakeet, kitten, cottontail, grouse.
Could all of their mothers have succumbed to the plow?
I only question their orphanhood now.

Nonetheless, the truth of the babies we raised
is that my dad’s motives can only be praised.
He adored babies, be they human or not.
And most kids turn out to be as they’re taught.

Twelve puppies, ten cats are the sum of the creatures
who, once I grew up, have been prominent features
of the lives that I’ve led. Every one first a waif,
who came to reside in a home that was safe.

In Australia and Africa and Boulder Creek,
I was never the one to procure or to seek.
The animals come, seeking shelter or food
and somehow ended up as part of my brood.

Gretchen, Rootia, and Kiddo and Patti,
Bentley and Bearcat and other kids catty:
Tallulah and Annie and Kukla and Fran.
Ollie and Roo. I’ll go on if I can,

Six Mexican beach puppies,  Frida and then
Diego and Morrie brought the total to ten
of puppies who lived for good or awhile
while I found them an alternate safe domicile.

You may call it obsession, but I have another
word to describe this tendency to mother.
This need to take care of what whines, barks or preens
is just not my fault. It’s built into my genes.

 

The prompt for NaPoWriMo today is: think about a small habit you picked up from one of your parents, and then to write a piece that explores an early memory of your parent engaged in that habit, before shifting into writing about yourself engaging in the same habit.

Prickly Pear Bloom: FOTD Apr 14, 2021

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For Cee’s FOTD

My Name

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Click on photos to enlarge.

My Name

It would have never occurred
to my mother or father
to look up the meaning of the name
before giving it to me.

In the Apocrypha,
Judith slew the Asian general
to save her people.

In Ethiopia, Judith is “Yodit,”
cruel usurper of the throne
and destroyer of Axum.

These women my parents had no knowledge of
might well have scorned the “Judy” I evolved into,
despite my mother’s best intentions
of always calling me Judith Kay.

Uncle Herman called me Jude
and I loved that,
but for years,
until I married,
nobody else ever did.
I never had many nicknames,
except from my father who called me Pole Cat
and my sister who called  me Jooj Pooj.

My oldest sister, Betty Jo,
knows her name
might have been prompted
by the popularity of Betty Boop
and my sister Patti Adair
has the same middle name
as her cousin Jayne
because my mother named them both,
but there is no story
for my given names.,
except that my mother liked them both.

I can draw a wading bird
using just the letters of my first name
in the correct progression,
lifting the pen off the paper only twice,
to form  the eye and leg.
Yet for years,
my name was a bird
that hadn’t found its wings.

My surname was carried to America
in the hull of a ship—
when my grandmother,
born of Dutch-immigrant parents,
married to an immigrant
Dutch baker to have a son
who passed the name Dykstra on to me.

Judy Kay Dykstra

The last two letters of my first name
and my middle initial
are the first three letters of my last name,
and the remaining four letters, rearranged, spell “star.”
Nobody planned that.

Judykstra
Judykstar.

The “dyke” part of my name is self-explanatory,
and the suffix “stra” is derived from 
the old Germanic word “sater,”
meaning “dweller,”
and although I’ve never lived by a seawall,
I like my name in its Dutch Shoes.

My surname
is not frequently seen
in the phonebooks
of most towns.
I’m not the one
who put it in famous places
like “Dykstra Hall” at UCLA or
in baseball statistics
on the sports page,
and it was John Dykstra
who had it engraved
on the academy award.

But it was my name written
along with my phone number
over the urinal at the library
in turquoise magic marker
by a disgruntled student,
and it took one month of late-night phone calls
from men asking, “Do you . . .?”
before a caller admitted
where he found the number
and was persuaded
to wash it off the wall.

And it was my name
written on the label of
a favorite coat left at the pier
and never returned,
so ever afterwards,
perhaps, my name
pressed against someone else’s neck.

I keep trying to change my name
into something else.

Into a bird.
Into a married name.

Drop mine, take his.
Keep mine and his,
I take his, he takes mine,
so we exchange names, both keeping both.
In the end, though, he drops mine, I keep both.

Judith Kay Dykstra-Brown. Bob Brown

My name next to his on a gravestone
in my hometown in South Dakota,
only mine open-dated.

My name on a paycheck every month for years,
and in the records of the tax collector,
then on a social security check.

For so long,
I was not yet within my name.
I wanted it to hold me,
but I couldn’t squeeze into it.

Until, finally,
my name on books and art
that told its full story.

Judy Dykstra-Brown.

I made it mine.

 

The prompt for NaPoWriMo for April 14 was to write a poem “that delves into the meaning of your first or last name.” The photo of the Murdo, S.D. phonebook circa 1955 was contributed by Wayne Esmay. Thanks, Wayne–a nice synchronicity that you published this in the Jones County History days after I wrote this poem. Is it obvious from the number of D’s in the phone book that I grew up in a very small town? Ben Dykstra was my father. Walter Dykstra was my grandfather.

Woodwind

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Woodwind

Breath, down through my lifetime, if I dare to cogitate,
creates a varied story that I’m driven to relate.
Along with embouchure, it was a subject of debate
that, added to execution, served to determine fate
by moving me from first chair to second, then to third
in placement in the school band. I easily conceded
to yield my place as first chair, and so was superseded
by player after player who played the saxophone
more skillfully than I did. I had not a bone
to pick with them. I knew I had neither skill nor lungs
to insure my placement in the upper rungs
of our school band’s placement. I really didn’t care
if I manned third or second or the first-ranked chair.

Tobacco, then pneumonia later played a hand
in lessening my lung power long after the school band
had retreated into history and a guitar took the place
of an instrument requiring both my breath and face
to execute its glories. And so my prowess lingers
longer now that it requires simply arms and fingers.
Meanwhile, my breath is used up by necessary things.
It talks and sighs and whistles and laughs and coughs and sings.
Even with more talent, it’s clear I’ve not enough of it
to put my mouth upon a reed and puff and puff and puff on it.
I’m glad I had no talent, for it would mean my death
if I had any other thing using up my breath!!!

Prompt words today are pneumonia, tobacco, embouchure, cogitate and empty.

How My Life Story Wound Up in the Sentinel: NaPoWriMo 2021, Day 13

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How My Life Story Wound Up in the Sentinel

Startled awake by the end of the rain,
I rise to the quiet push of air
against my face and brain. I light the fire,
then lie on the couch under quilts.
One gray cat lies on top of me,
and the other jumps up soon after;
so for this long time before full light,
I am a warm bed for cats.

They fit themselves along the curves of my body,
pressing into the empty spaces.
My shoulder and arm are tucked
and held in place by the large male cat,
my folded knees and legs
pinned by the smaller yet heavier female.

As I reach for yesterday’s Sentinel
and the crossword puzzle pen clipped to it,
the male cat spills from my shoulder and arm
and moves to my hip.
Forsaking the Sunday puzzle,
I instead stroke his soft fur—
this stroke becoming an addiction
to both me and the cat,
who butts my hand with his head when I quit.

With my other hand,
I squeeze words into the margins of the newspaper—
the only paper within arm’s reach.
I have filled the margins of page one and I am writing
over the picture of a Maine house with no power.
My ink partially obscures the name of the female cadet
who has dropped out of the Virginia Military Academy
as my pen nudges closer to the comic pages.

I am telling my life story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Over Dear Abby, my pen sails like a schooner.
When she says to practice tough love,
my words are over her words and my words say,
“I let the cat out
to the cold morning that fills the spaces
between the redwood trees.”

Five minutes later, he’s back again
crying at the door,
and I tell of it,
crossing the obituaries with details
of life in the mountains with cats
and a husband still sensibly in bed.

I write of rain that sits like a box around us
for five months of every year,
pressing our minds down to crossword puzzles
and mystery novels until,
huddled in bed under the electric blanket,
we find each other curled up
in the same cocoon.

His body spooned to my body
like a cat,
under the covers of rain,
we draw again into
the small bit of magic that powers
our crowded lives.

Outside, crisp air stands still, expectant,
as  from very high above, a squirrel
drops cone shards like confetti
from a swaying redwood branch,
her crooning forest calls
falling with them.
The sun is rising
and clear air beckons me to walk
to the end of our long rain-soaked driveway
to retrieve today’s paper.

In  the long hours spent awaiting dawn,
I’ve filled up with these words
the margins of yesterday’s paper.
I’ve crosshatched the want ads
and the “Bay Living” section
and the comics,
So that a  gray squirrel
zips across Blondie’s nose,
and a redwood tree spills its needles
onto Hagar the Horrible.

Somehow, my spouse ends up
nestled into bed
next to Dagwood,
and Cathy is almost obscured
by the curled bodies of cats.

Moving away from, then settling back into
this safe nest we’ve made,
I add one last description of my journey
down my driveway
and a life that for this moment
is released from rain.

And that is how my story—
what fills up my life—
came to fill up
the pages of the Sentinel.

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem in the form of a news article you wish would come out tomorrow.

More Than His Memory, dVerse Poets

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More Than His Memory

More than his memory, it was his scent that awakened me to the full moon scrimmed by clouds. I moved to the sliding doors and out to the jacuzzi. Who else in this world would float on the surface of the water under this remarkable moon? The curious cat came to bear company, and the dogs. One hummingbird whirred incongruous over blooms in the night. This pulse in my ear of hummingbird and blood drew one mosquito into its chorus, annoying and persistent, to drive me into the water as easily as his scent had pulled me out of my shell of troubling dreams into the glowing night. A hand smoothed a path in the water, as if to welcome me. “If you are a dreamer, come in,” he said.

 

 

The prompt was to use the line “If you are a dreamer, come in,” in a story with a beginning, middle and end that was under 144 words. For dVerse Poets.